NT's mandatory alcohol rehab up for review

A 50-year-old man from a remote Aboriginal community, who had been taken into protective custody 81 times in the past year, has been successfully treated through mandatory alcohol rehabilitation, the Northern Territory government says.

After treatment, he reconnected with his family, whom he hadn't seen in three years.

Six months after mandatory alcohol rehabilitation was introduced, the government is reviewing the system, which has seen 155 people complete three-month treatments, with another 42 people still in treatment.

In total, 206 people have been referred to the program, which is estimated to cost about $43,000 per person.

Seventy-eight clients have been placed on 70 per cent income management for up to a year since the federal government gave the NT welfare quarantining powers last year.

This prevents them spending Centrelink payments on alcohol, tobacco or gambling.

"These powers provide a further tool to restrict people from accessing alcohol once they leave treatment," Health Minister Robyn Lambley said in a statement on Thursday.

The Alcohol Mandatory Treatment legislation is now open for a six-month review, in order to determine how it "facilitates access to treatment by people who repeatedly misuse alcohol" and to examine instances of serious misuse of alcohol which do not currently fall within the ambit of the act.

Under the act, anyone taken into custody by police three times in two months due to extreme public drunkenness will be eligible for assessment by the program and could be forced to undergo treatment for their addiction.

Eleven people have so far absconded from treatment, including one 31-year-old man from the Tiwi Islands who left more than five times in the early months of the system.

It would be much more difficult for patients to escape once the facility was moved to the Darwin prison's low-security unit later this year, due to improved surveillance, Ms Lambley told the ABC.